Baseball broadcaster voice is a uniquely American dialect, just as distinctive as the flat “pahk the cah” of New England or the twangy “how y’all doin’” of the South. The only difference is that the patter of the play-by-play announcer isn’t native to any geographical region but to the sport itself. It has a relaxed, front-porch-on-a-summer’s-evening cadence that rises and dips like a slow-moving roller coaster, mixed with an exaggerated, deep-voiced theatricality. Think Bob Uecker in the Major League movies, a classic example of the lingo and its rhythm.

The style isn’t as prevalent as it was a decade or two ago, but it’s still familiar to almost anyone who has ever watched a ballgame, or better yet, listened to one on the radio. Vin Scully did an elegant version of baseball broadcaster voice. Harry Caray did a slightly inebriated one. Bob Murphy, the late Mets play-by-play man, was one of the foremost practitioners of the art, and Joe Buck has picked up...

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